On Becoming Better

   بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 اَی خُدا کَمتَرین گَدایِ تُوَام

 

چَشم بَر خوانِ کِبریایِ تُوَام

 

می‌رَسَم بَر دَرِ تُو هَر روزَه

 

شَی‌ءٌ لِلّٰه‌زَنان بِه دَریوزَه

 

نَفس و شَیطان کِه خَصمِ دینِ مَنَند

 

چون سِگانِ خُفتِه دَر کَمینِ مَنَند

 

گَر چُنین خوار و بی‌کَسَم نِگَرَند

 

پوست بَر مَن چُو پوستین بِدَرَند

 

اَز بَدِ این سِگان اَمانَم دِه

 

هَر چِه آنَم، بِه‌اَست آنَم دِه  

 

Meaning: 

O God, I am the least of Your beggars,

my eyes fixed on the table of Your majesty.

Every day I come to Your door,

crying, “for God’s sake, something,” like a beggar.

The lower self and Satan are enemies of my faith;

they lie in ambush for me like sleeping dogs.

If they see me weak and friendless,

they will tear my skin from me like a sheepskin.

Give me refuge from the evil of these dogs,

and grant me whatever state is better than the one I have now.

Language:

Persian/Farsi

Transliteration:

Ay Khudā kamtarīn gadā-ye to-am

Chashm bar khwān-e kibriyā-ye to-am

Mī-rasam bar dar-e to har rūzeh

Shay'an lillāh-zanān be daryūzeh

Nafs o shayṭān ke khaṣm-e dīn-e manand

Chūn sagān-e khufta dar kamīn-e manand

Gar chunīn khvār o bī-kasam nigarand

Pūst bar man chu pūstīn bidarand

Az bad-e īn sagān amānam deh

Har che ānam, beh-ast ānam deh

 

Origins:

This passage is explicitly titled “Munājāt” in Jāmī’s Silsilat al-dhahab. Jāmī (1414–1492) was a Persian poet, scholar, and Sufi, and Silsilat al-dhahab is the first of the seven long masnavis gathered under the title Haft Awrang. Iranica notes that the first daftar of Silsilat al-dhahab was composed between 1468 and 1472, and this prayer appears as section 87 of that first daftar.

The placement is part of the meaning. The section immediately before this one is about istiʿādhah, seeking refuge from Satan, and it ends with the image of a beggar fleeing a hostile dog and throwing himself into the protection of a master. This little munājāt then reads like the lived form of that teaching.

Brief Explanation:

This little prayer is short, but it carries a whole map of the inner struggle. The speaker does not come to God as a possessor of virtue. He comes as a beggar. That is the first truth of the poem. The eye is fixed on God’s table, not on the self’s imagined resources.

Then the danger is named plainly: nafs and Satan. Jāmī does not soften them. He calls them dogs lying in ambush. That image matters because temptation is not always noisy. A great deal of it waits. It watches for weakness, loneliness, discouragement, and spiritual fatigue.

To my ear, the deepest line is the last one: “grant me whatever state is better than the one I have now.” The prayer does not stop at protection. It asks for transformation. It leaves the choice of the better state to God. That is humility in its real form: not merely saying that I am low, but admitting that God knows better than I do what I ought to become.

Devotional Use:

Munājāt is a recognized genre of intimate, personal prayer in Persian literature, and the broader classical understanding of doʿā centers on asking God while confessing one’s weakness and helplessness. That is why a piece like this lives so naturally in private devotion: it is short, direct, and built on need rather than display.

This is, to my ear, a daily beggar’s prayer. It can be carried into the morning before the day’s struggles, into the night after one has seen one’s own failures, or into any hour when the soul feels surrounded. Its movement is sound: confess poverty, name the enemies, ask for refuge, then ask not only for rescue, but for a better state.

What gives the prayer its lasting force is that it does not flatter the self. It does not say, “I am nearly safe.” It says: I am poor, I am exposed, and if You do not shelter me, I will be torn apart. Like the best munājāt, it does not perform piety. It speaks from need.

Empty me out of myself

   بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

یا رَبّ! دِلِ پاک و جانِ آگاهم دِه

 

آهِ شَب و گِریهٔ سَحَرگاهم دِه

 

دَر راهِ خُود اَوَّل زِ خُودَم  بی‌خود کُن

 

بی‌خود چُو شُدَم زِ خُود بِخود راهم دِه

 

Meaning: 

Lord, give me a pure heart and an awakened soul.

Give me the sigh of the night and the tears of dawn.

On Your path, first take me out of myself;

and when I am emptied of myself, then show me the road back to You.

Language:

Persian/Farsi

Transliteration:

Yā Rabb! Del-e pāk o jān-e āgāham deh

Āh-e shab o girya-ye saḥargāham deh

Dar rāh-e khod avval ze khodam bī-khod kun

Bī-khod chu shudam ze khod be-khod rāham deh

There is a whole manajat in this video, beginning with these verses:

Origins:

This quatrain is commonly transmitted in the Munājāt  collections of prayers attributed to Khwāja ʿAbdallāh Anṣārī of Herat. A caution about the textual history is useful here: Anṣārī was above all a teacher and preacher, much of what survives from him came through dictation and disciples’ notes, and collections of his invocations circulated in more than one form. Even with that caution, the Munājāt associated with his name became widely known and deeply influential, and later writers describe them as beautiful, intensely personal prayers. 

Brief Explanation:

This little prayer is very compact, but it contains a whole path. It begins with two inward gifts: purity of heart and wakefulness of soul. Then it asks for two outward signs of that inward life: the sigh in the night and the tear at dawn. In other words, Anṣārī is not asking merely to feel something religious. He is asking for a heart so alive to God that the night becomes remembrance and the dawn becomes tenderness.

To my ear, the sharpest line is the third: “On Your path, first take me out of myself.” That is the center of the poem. The real obstruction is not first the world, nor even suffering. It is the self that keeps placing itself between the seeker and God. So the prayer does not begin with lofty stations. It begins with cleansing, wakefulness, brokenness, and only then the undoing of self-regard.

The last line is the deepest of all. In discussions of Anṣārī’s thought, the language of going out of the self is tied to the discovery of the deeper Self in the heart. So when the speaker asks to be emptied of himself and then shown the road, the line can be heard as more than simple negation. It is a passage from the false, noisy ego to the truth God discloses. That is what keeps the prayer from becoming cold asceticism. It is intimate because it is severe. 

Devotional Use:

That is why the piece has stayed alive in personal devotion. It is short, direct, and ascetic without being cold. It is easy to carry in memory, easy to recite alone, and deep enough to reopen at different stages of the path. Like the best munājāt, it does not perform piety. It speaks from need. 

Time and Moral Urgency

 

  بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 مَضَى أَمْسُكَ الْمَاضِي شَهِيدًا مُعَدَّلًا 

وَأَعْقَبَهُ يَوْمٌ عَلَيْكَ جَدِيدٌ

 

فَيَوْمُكَ إِنْ أَغْنَيْتَهُ عَادَ نَفْعُهُ 

عَلَيْكَ وَمَاضِي الْأَمْسِ لَيْسَ يَعُودُ

 

فَإِنْ كُنْتَ بِالْأَمْسِ اقْتَرَفْتَ إِسَاءَةً

فَثَنِّ بِإِحْسَانٍ وَأَنْتَ حَمِيدٌ

 

فَلَا تُرْجِ فِعْلَ الْخَيْرِ يَوْمًا إِلَى غَدٍ

لَعَلَّ غَدًا يَأْتِي وَأَنْتَ فَقِيدٌ 

Meaning: 

Yesterday has passed, a witness whose testimony stands,

and after it a new day has come to you.

If you make today rich with good, its benefit returns to you;

yesterday will not come back.

So if you did some wrong yesterday,

follow it with goodness, and you will be praiseworthy.

Do not put off a good deed until tomorrow;

tomorrow may come when you yourself are gone.

Language:

Arabic

Transliteration:

Maḍā amsuka al-māḍī shahīdan muʿaddalan

wa-aʿqabahu yawmun ʿalayka jadīd

fa-yawmuka in aghnaytahu ʿāda nafʿuhu

ʿalayka wa-māḍī al-amsi laysa yaʿūd

fa-in kunta bi-l-amsi iqtarafta isāʾatan

fa-thanni bi-iḥsānin wa-anta ḥamīd

fa-lā turji fiʿla al-khayri yawman ilā ghadin

laʿalla ghadan yaʾtī wa-anta faqīd

Origins:

 

The earliest extant record I could verify is in Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s Kalām al-Layālī wa-l-Ayyām. In the passage after a saying of ʿAbd Allāh b. Marwān b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥakam, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā says directly, “أنشدني محمود بن الحسن”, then gives the four lines. A scanned copy of the book preserves the same wording,.

That attribution is then corroborated by al-Bayhaqī in al-Zuhd al-Kabīr, who transmits with an isnād to Ibn Abī al-Dunyā: “أنشدني محمود بن الحسن قوله”, followed by the same poem. So the chain is not just “quoted anonymously”; it comes through a report framed as Ibn Abī al-Dunyā hearing it from Mahmud himself.

The Mahmud in question is best identified as محمود الورّاق، ابن الحسن البغدادي. Biographical notices describe him as a Baghdadi poet known for moral and ascetic verse, and they note specifically that Ibn Abī al-Dunyā narrated from him.

There is also a competing later attribution. Al-Thaʿlabī preserves a variant with “وأصبحت في يوم عليك شهيد” and attributes it to al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī, while al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī transmits a close variant and labels it “لمحمود”. Because Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s witness is earlier and direct, the safer literary judgment is that the poem is by Mahmud al-Warraq, while the al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī attribution is a later rival attribution.

Brief Explanation:

The poem turns time into a moral witness. Yesterday is not merely over; it is now part of the record. Today, by contrast, is still open. That is why the poem moves from memory to action: you cannot retrieve yesterday, but you can still use today well.

What gives the poem its depth is that it is not just about “using time wisely.” It is about accountability before God. The phrase shahīdan muʿaddalan has an almost juridical sound: yesterday is like a reliable witness whose testimony will be accepted. So the poem presses two things at once—self-reckoning and immediate repair.

To my ear, the poem is stronger than a simple warning against laziness. It teaches moral urgency: do not waste the present in regret over the past, but do not hide behind regret either. Turn regret into action.

In the classical ascetic and ethical tradition, days and nights are often described as witnesses over human deeds, and this poem is a very concentrated expression of that outlook. The surrounding material in later moral works preserves exactly this idea: each day comes as something new, bears witness to what is done in it, and then departs forever.

A note about variants:

First, there is “in aghnaytahu” versus “in aʿtabtahu.” In one early witness from Ibn Abī al-Dunyā the line reads “fa-yawmuka in aghnaytahu ʿāda nafʿuhu”: if you enrich today, fill it with worthwhile good, its benefit returns to you. In al-Bayhaqī’s transmission it reads “in aʿtabtahu”: if you use today to make amends, to set matters right, its benefit returns to you. The first reading stresses fruitfulness; the second stresses repentance and repair. The nearby prose in Ibn Rajab about having a mustaʿtab, a chance to make amends, fits that second shade especially well.

Second, there is “wa-aʿqabahu yawmun ʿalayka jadīd” versus “wa-aṣbaḥta fī yawmin ʿalayka shahīd.” The first means: yesterday was followed by a new day. The second is more vivid and personal: you have awakened into a day that is itself a witness over you. So one version emphasizes succession; the other intensifies the image of scrutiny and testimony. The latter appears in the rival attribution preserved by al-Thaʿlabī.

Third, the order of the middle couplets shifts in transmission. In the Ibn Abī al-Dunyā witness, the couplet about wrongdoing yesterday comes before the couplet about making today fruitful. In later quotations, including one cited by Ibn Rajab, the order appears as in the version you sent: first the present day, then repair of yesterday. The meaning stays close, but the emphasis shifts a little. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s order makes today the remedy for yesterday’s fault; the reordered version makes today the main opportunity, then explains one chief use of that opportunity.

The World in the sight of the People of Insight

  بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

جَهَان اَز رَنگ و بُو سَازَد اَسِیرَت 

وَلِی دَر  پِیشِ اَرْبابِ بَصِیرَت 

نَه رَنگِ دِلْکَشَش رَا اِعْتِبَارِی‌سْت  

نَه بُویِ دِلْفَرِیبَش رَا مَدَارِی‌سْت 

 

Meaning: 

The world ensnares you with its colors and perfumes,

but in the presence of People of Insight,

its enchanting hues have no worth,

and its beguiling fragrance has no hold.

Language:

Persian/Farsi

Transliteration:

Jahān az rang o bū sāzad asīrat

Valī dar pīsh-e arbāb-e baṣīrat

Na rang-e delkashash rā eʿtebārīst

Na bū-ye delfarībash rā madārīst

Brief Explanation:

 

Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504–5) is quoted in Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī’s Rūḥ al-Bayān on Qurʾān 18:8, in support of the idea of not getting entrenched in this world. The poem is about surface attraction versus inner insight. “Rang o bū” — color and fragrance — stands for the world’s outward charm: beauty, display, seduction, all the things that catch the senses. The first line says that the world can enslave a person through these attractions. But the second line shifts perspective: those with basīrat, inward sight or spiritual discernment, are not deceived by appearances.

The last two lines reinforce that point. Iʿtibār means weight, credit, worth, something that deserves to be taken seriously. Madār in classical Persian can carry senses like axis, center, basis, or that on which something turns, so here it suggests something one can rely on or revolve around. In other words, to the people of insight, the world’s beauty is not false in the narrow sense that it does not exist; rather, it is not ultimate, not dependable, and not worthy of spiritual attachment.

So the poem’s meaning is not “beauty is bad.” It is subtler than that: what dazzles the senses should not rule the heart. This is a classic Persian ethical and Sufi theme — the contrast between ẓāhir (outward appearance) and bāṭin (inner reality).

The fragility of comfort

 بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

يَا صَاحِبِي لا تَغْتَرِرْ بِتَنَعُّمٍ

فَالْعُمْرُ يَنْفَدُ وَالنَّعِيمُ يَزُولُ

وَإِذَا عَلِمْتَ بِحَالِ قَوْمٍ مَرَّةً

فَاعْلَمْ بِأَنَّكَ عَنْهُمْ مَسْؤُولُ

وَإِذَا حَمَلْتَ إِلَى الْقُبُورِ جِنَازَةً

فَاعْلَمْ بِأَنَّكَ بَعْدَهَا مَحْمُولُ

Meaning: 

My friend, don’t be fooled by comfort and ease—

life runs out, and every ease fades away

And if you ever come to know the state of other people, even once,

know that you’ll be held to account for them.

And when you carry a funeral bier to the graves,

know that one day you too will be (similarly) carried.

Language:

Arabic

Transliteration:

Yā ṣāḥibī, lā taghtarr bi-tanaʿʿum;

fa-l-ʿumru yanfadu wa-n-naʿīmu yazūl.

Wa-idhā ʿalimta bi-ḥāli qawmin marratan,

faʿlam bi-annaka ʿanhum masʾūl.

Wa-idhā ḥamalta ilā l-qubūri janāzatan,

faʿlam bi-annaka baʿdahā maḥmūl.

Brief Explanation:

These lines circulate in the adab/raqāʾiq tradition as a short “zuhd” piece embedded in the anecdote of Hārūn al‑Rashīd’s ascetic son, known in biographical literature as “ولد الرشيد المعروف بالسبتي” (the “Sabbātī,” i.e., the one who worked on Saturdays). In Ibn al‑Jawzī’s retellings of the story he explicitly warns that storytellers embellished it with “impossible” additions—so the core anecdote is early, but some poetic/legendary details can be later accretions.

1) In al‑Yāfiʿī, Rawḍ al‑Riyāḥīn fī Ḥikāyāt al‑Ṣāliḥīn, he transmits the story of the “Sabbātī” and, at the moment of his death, places three couplets on his tongue

2) In Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī, Rūḥ al‑Bayān fī Tafsīr al‑Qurʾān (tafsīr on al‑Kahf 18:8), we can find that he quoptes essentially the same anecdote while commenting on “وَإِنَّا لَجَاعِلُونَ مَا عَلَيْهَا صَعِيدًا جُرُزًا,” but he quotes only the two couplets  (he omits the middle one).

There is also a  key “variant cluster” that circulates outside the “Sabbātī / son of Hārūn” story, paired with different lines. For example, al‑Qurṭubī cites it (anonymously: “وأنشدوا…”) together with:

وَإِذَا وُلِّيتَ أُمُورَ قَوْمٍ لَيْلَةً … فَاعْلَمْ بِأَنَّكَ بَعْدَهَا مَسْؤُولُ

وَإِذَا حَمَلْتَ إِلَى الْقُبُورِ جِنَازَةً … فَاعْلَمْ بِأَنَّكَ بَعْدَهَا مَحْمُولُ

يَا صَاحِبَ الْقَبْرِ الْمُنَقَّشِ سَطْحُهُ … وَلَعَلَّهُ مِنْ تَحْتِهِ مَغْلُولُ

If, (even)for one night, the affairs of a people are placed in your hands,

remember: after that, you will be answerable.

If you carry a body to its grave,

remember: one day, you will be the one carried.

You whose tomb is adorned with carved stone—

perhaps below it rests one bound in chains.

That matters because it shows the “جنازة / محمول” bayt has an independent life in the admonition literature—so when it shows up inside the “Sabbātī” anecdote, it may be borrowed/attached rather than securely “his.”

The foundational brick

  بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

چُون گُذارَد خِشْتِ اوَّل بَر زَمین، مِعْمارِ کَج

گَر رَسانَد بَر فَلَک، باشَد هَمان دیوارِ کَج

Meaning: 

If an architect/builder sets the brick of the foundation incorrectly in a crooked manner

Even if he manages to make the wall reach up to the sky, it will still be a crooked wall

Language:

Persian/Farsi

Transliteration:

Choon Guzarad Khishte Awal Bar Zameen Ma'imar Kaj

Gar Rasanad Bar Falak, Bashad Haman Deewar Kaj

 

 Video/Audio:

Brief Explanation:

The verses means that in anything, our fundamentals must be right from the beginning. No "ends justify the means", but rather the intention of doing something must be correct, and the steps and the means to achieve the same must be righteous, otherwise whatever we do will be tainted no matter how successful it seems.

Background:
These verses are from one of the famous poems of Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṣāʾib , also known as Saib Tibrizi. The verses have inspired a well known proverb as well:

خِشْتِ اوَّل گَر نِهَد مِعْمارِ کَج

تا ثُرَیّا می‌رَوَد دیوارِ کَج

If an architect lays the first brick crooked

Even if the wall reaches the highest galaxies, it is still crooked

Shoo Away

  بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

  اَز سَرِ بالینِ مَن بَرخیز، اَی نادان طَبیب

دَرْدمَنْدِ عِشْق را دارو بِجُز دیدار نیست

Meaning: 

O ignorant physician! Shoo away from my bed side

There is no remedy for a love afflicted person except a vision of the Beloved 

Language:

Persian/Farsi

Transliteration:

Az sare baleene man barkheez ae nadan tabeeb

Dardmande isqh ra, daroo bejuz deedar neest 

 

 Video/Audio:

 

Brief Explanation:

True lovers find relief from affliction only in the presence of the Beloved.

Background:

This is from one of the controversial poems of hazrat Amir Khusrau indicating his choice of a religion of Love over all forms of formal religions, and also his indifference to the reaction of the common folk to his choice.  Although Amir Khusrau is extremely well known as a Sufi and a pious person, it is often seen that he would use shocking terminology to promote the idea of love, prioritizing it over other aspects of religion.